More senior electoral officers in Northern Ireland will face criminal charges as part of a vendetta against staff, it was claimed today.
Mr Alastair Patterson, the former deputy returning officer for Fermanagh-South Tyrone, is due in court next month and the constituency's one-time MP, Lord Maginnis of Drumglass, alleged that others were also being victimised.
He said: "They are being made to look like criminals when they preserved a democratic process by dint of their own initiatives, some at a cost of their personal health."
Mr Patterson, a former chief executive of Lord Maginnis's Ulster Unionist Party, is to be accused of theft and false accounting, police said.
The charges follow an inquiry into alleged offences within the area electoral office for Fermanagh-South Tyrone, West Tyrone and Mid Ulster between 1996 and 2001.
Mr Patterson is due to appear at Omagh magistrates' court on November 11 to be charged with 17 counts of theft and 13 of false accounting.
He has stood down from his position within the Ulster Unionists, but will continue working for the party.
Mr Patterson was the returning officer who announced the election of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands as an MP in 1981.
PA